


and we'll laugh until the world is ours

by masongrey



Series: pearlet one-shots [2]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: M/M, Oops, Sorry About It, betrayal is not cute, bitter of pageant girls, i have no problems with any queens, no ma'am no pam no ham, this is pretty short, unless they are hateful bitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 23:43:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4241157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masongrey/pseuds/masongrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginger and Kennedy turn on Violet and Pearl on the mainstage and it's unexpected and terrible at the same time. This is the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and we'll laugh until the world is ours

Violet never has never been one to misunderstand things. Misunderstanding is a sloppy, tired, worn out excuse. So when Pearl sits on the couch and stares at the ground silently with his snake eyes, Violet does not misinterpret it.

Ginger and Kennedy are busy running their mouths. They're just two ugly, loud, crows dressed as canaries that sing to a far different tune when the cameras are off. It feels a little like betrayal, but to Violet it only tastes of desperation. Violet has never had a problem clocking the acrid taste of desperation. It clings to things in a thin, sticky sheen and always seeps through just enough to be glimpsed. But only if you're looking. Violet is always looking.

Violet isn't offended. Not quite. He's about a foot and a half past pissed off, but he won't go and get all shy and demure and biting about his issues. This isn't a tea party in Victorian era England for god's sakes. Pearl is shutting down, drowning in things he's desperately trying to process. Pearl doesn't have a shy and demure mode, but he doesn't have experience with sharp confrontation either. Violet knows that Pearl thought he had earned his respect with blood and sweat. But what he really earned was a first hand experience with the masters of masking desperation behind three foot thick concrete walls; pageant girls.

Pageant girls with shining nails, hair to high heaven, sparkly dresses. Stick enough pageant girls with enough of the same pageant girl things into a room, and the claws come out. It's impossible to win without ruffling a few feathers. It's impossible to ruffle a few feathers without killing a few birds. If all the birds look the same, sound the same, think the same, which of the birds aren't expendable? The ones with the sharpest claws.

To Violet art is art. If you need to fight a war to believe in your own art, you never should have made it to begin with. His drag doesn't need insults to stand behind it. His claws are smooth and round and polished and beautiful, not jagged and sharp and cutting. But Violet lives in Atlanta and is quite familiar with the perfectly sharp ways of the pageant queen.

So he's more or less prepared for this. Pearl is not. Pearl, aloof though he is, expects honesty and truth from everyone. And he's naive enough to trust anyone, which is oddly endearing.

Violet wishes Ginger would shut the hell up so Pearl's quiet, raspy whispers could be heard. Ginger's been bellowing the same thing loudly for an hour and a half, and it's just another perfect, coiffed response. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I had to. This is a competition.  
Violet's had about enough.

Finally Pearl starts responding, throwing out his own perfect pageant answers with a little acid for good measure. It's fine, girl. I know. It's fine. I'm not upset. You had to girl. It's a competition.

Violet hides a smirk behind his cranberry cocktail as Ginger calms instantly. He slaps back a twinge of sadness at the fact that Ginger has been exposed so much to this pleasant version of the truth that he can't even see through it anymore. Starve enough in the desert and even bull shit starts to look pretty damn good. The perfect mockery seems to soothe Kennedy as well. Not that Kennedy had the decency to even be upset about the damage his bitter words had caused.

Violet wants to wrap his fingers around Pearl's wrist, hold the jutting bones between his fingertips.

Violet wants to remind Pearl. It's easy to get lost in a cloud of hairspray and powder. It's easy to lose your footing when all you see before you is a fifty foot drop. It's easy to forget what it all means, why you're even here.

Instead, Violet just spins his straw around his cocktail, watching the ice clink and swirl around his cup, a tiny, melodious, orchestra of noise and color. It's the only sound for a while, the humming of the generators and the tinging of the ice.

Pearl rises to his feet with a calm elegance and swishes away to smoke a cigarette. Violet curls his feet underneath him, tries to make himself as small as possible. Because, for as little respect Ginger has for Pearl, there is that much less left over for him. Not that he cares much about Ginger. Not that he _should_ care much about Ginger. The bitter old ladies brigade has made their stance on styles of drag that differed from their own quite clear. Violet hates disdainful people, in a purely ironic way, of course. So Violet tilts his head, quick and birdlike, and purses his lips as he sips his cocktail.

Ginger shuffles over to face Violet, the same broken down apology burning behind his eyes. They both know he's not sorry. Violet finds it a little funny that he's even trying.

“It's fine by me girl.” Violet sips his drink again with a raised eyebrow.

The air is heavy when Ginger finally slumps off to go and try talking to Pearl again. A cameraman follows them. They know what makes good TV. Ginger does too, apparently.

Kennedy cracks his knuckles and Violet lets his eyes flutter closed as he braces himself for a barrage of nastiness and crudely phrased remarks.

Violet's never been shy, but this is surely as tired as he ever hopes to be. He only has so much left in him to fend off reads and criticisms. God knows he's spent the whole competition doing just that. There's a small part of Violet that's jealous of Pearl for even having the opportunity to let his guard down. Violet hasn't been completely free with anyone all season, not even Fame could coax it out of him.

“It's not easy for me like it is for you,” Kennedy is choked, and it tears Violet's attention immediately away from his swirling drink. “I can't look into the mirror and know that I'm fierce, like you.”

“You are bitch.” It's out and it hovers a while before it makes a landing. “I hope to god that someday you watch this season and see yourself lipsynch and think, good god I am sickening, Because the fire in your eyes when you perform, that crazy passion and dedication and talent, is why I do drag.” Initially Violet wonders if it's too heavy. Too much emotion, too many deep truths. But as Kennedy cries, as the three foot concrete wall is broken down a little, Violet knows that he's said the right thing, even if Kennedy doesn't deserve to hear it. Because it's the truth, and the truth makes all the difference.

After twenty minutes or so, Ginger marches back into the room., cameraman trailing behind like a lost dog, or an out of place paparazzi. Without a second thought, Violet stands.

He wants to talk to Pearl too. Off camera and off record. He wants to talk to Pearl for real.

The hallway to the smoking area is unfamiliar. The faded white cinder blocks guide Violet to the door.

He's almost blinded by the light that attacks his eyes as he stumbles through. The stoop is worn down in a charming sort of way, crumbling a little at the edges and in need of a fresh coat of paint, but more or less perfect.

Pearl is sitting on a little bench and crying angrily, the stinging words that Ginger and Kennedy had spilled on that stage are bubbling up in hot tears that streak through his makeup. Violet wonders if Ginger has seen Pearl cry, or probably ever will again. He lets his hand flutters over to land gently on Pearl's shoulder.

“Your makeup, girl.” Violet's whisper jackhammers into the silence. Pearl sucks in a breath and his fingers clench white around his cigarette.

“I can't trust anyone,” Pearl shoots back. “This is a competition right? Might as well play the dammed game and step on as many fucking people as it takes to get to the top.” His voice is steely and hard, but the tears still cut sharp lines down his face.

“You are not one of those fucking people, Pearl. You're not one of the ones that gets stepped on, or one of the ones that has to scrabble up to the top on other peoples backs. You took the hard way, and you proved yourself. You did fucking amazing at it too.” Violet is shaking a little. Most everything he says comes from a place of truth, and this may be from the truest place of them all. He hungers for Pearl's effortless fashion and sense of style.

“I don't think I'm doing badly. I know that much. It just sucks that they said all that shit about us. Like it would be fine or whatever if this whole time it had been us against them, you know?” Pearl pauses to scrub his eyes and take another drag from his cigarette. “But it wasn't. They lied. Either to us or to RuPaul. Both are a pretty fucking big deal in my books.” Another pause, and then, the fatal last words, “I just want this to be over.”

Violet, as hard as he tries, can't think of anything else to say. He wraps himself around Pearl, resting his head on the other queen's shoulder. Pearl shakes a little, stabbing his cigarette out on the arm of the bench, singeing a little hole into the wood. Violet just breathes in Pearl's smell, a strangely compelling mix of foundation powder and tobacco, and waits until the tension in his shoulders dissipates. It takes a while, but Violet is persistent and eventually Pearl relents, slumping against him. The tepid Los Angeles air weighs down on both of them and it's sort of nice.

“We have to combine our powers too bitch,” Violet breathes softly. “Because if Kennedy and Ginger think that they're the best team to come out of this whole competition, they haven't seen anything yet.”

“Rujubee,” Pearl sighs dramatically, “Rujubee is definitely the best team to come out of this whole competition.”

Violet laughs suddenly, his body shaking in his tightly wound corset. It hurts but he can't help it.

“The more I think about it, Brown Flowers is my personal favorite,” Pearl hides his smile in Violet's wig.

“Both formidable teams,” Violet muses. And it's true, they are. “But something tells me that if _we_ combined our powers, we could take over the world.”

''What half do I get?” Pearl is toying with his lighter absentmindedly, clicking it on and off. His eyes are locked in a strange hold with Violet's. They've shifted strangely on this bench, in more ways than one.

“Whatever half you want. Hell, I'll give you the whole damn thing.” Violet is serious about that. He doesn't care what he gets so long as Pearl is there to get it with him. And that's the truth. And it sort of scares him, but it's also sort of wonderful at the same time.

Pearl raises an eyebrow, his piercing glinting in the sun. “I'm no charity case bitch.”

And Violet tips his head back and laughs and he can't seem to stop. It really wasn't that funny. But soon Pearl is laughing too and it's probably the nicest noise Violet has ever heard. And then Pearl snorts and they lean back and kick their feet up and down and the laugh until they get stitches in their sides and aches in their lungs. They laugh like two little kids who have just discovered their first fart joke.

Violet's walls come crashing down but he doesn't even blink twice about it.

They laugh like two people that know they own the whole world and everything on it.

They laugh until the lines are blurred.

They laugh until their lips press together.

Maybe it's Violet who owns Pearl's world. Or maybe Pearl who owns Violet's world. There's no way to tell.

But they laugh until it doesn't matter.

**Author's Note:**

> i know i keep posting weird short things, but i really hope that you enjoyed this!  
> have a fantastic day, and comment to tell me what you think!


End file.
